Skiing began centuries ago in Scandinavia as a way to travel on foot over snow. It was largely unknown in other parts of Europe until it was introduced in the Alps as a novelty in the latter half of the 1800s. At that time, skis were primarily used for gliding over relatively flat terrain, and in fact were sometimes referred to as "Norwegian snowshoes." Their length--up to 12 feet or longer--made them virtually impossible to turn on steep downhill runs.
As skis became more recreational than utilitarian, they were made shorter and became more manageable. It became possible to execute downhill turns on them using a technique developed in the village of Telemark, Norway. This technique, which became known as the telemark turn, required dropping one knee and extending the other leg forward at an angle in the direction of the turn. The bindings, usually simply a leather strap that crossed the toe of the boot, allowed the heel to rise off the board. This had three functions: it allowed the skier to get up on the ball of the foot to execute the knee dip required for the telemark turn; it allowed enough movement to reduce the likelihood of leg injury in the event of a fall; and it allowed the skier to "walk" on the skis, like snowshoes, over flat areas and up hills.
Loose-heel bindings--now called Nordic or telemark bindings--were the rule in the early days of downhill skiing, in part because skiing required hiking up the mountain before gliding down it. In the 1930s, the first rope tows were installed in the U.S. and the new stem christy, or "wedge turn", supplanted the graceful, but more difficult, telemark turn. With no need to walk up hills or to dip a knee to turn, there was no longer a need to keep the skier's heel free. The releasable, lock-down binding appeared, and boots became stiffer and higher until hard-shell plastic models became the rule in the 1970s. Telemarking and loose-heel skiing went into eclipse.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence in telemark skiing. Improvements in boots, combined with an appreciation for the weight-shifting advantages of loose-heel bindings in soft snow, have made telemarking a fast-growing sport. Despite the relative difficulty of the technique--or perhaps in part because of it--telemark skiers have become a common sight even at lift-served areas.
Ironically, while ski lifts obviated the need for "walking" on skis, and thus nearly eliminated the loose-heel or Nordic binding from the ski scene, there was no effort to get away from having an independent ski on each foot until the 1960s. In that decade, several permutations of the mono-ski appeared, like that of Jacques Marchand, May 11 1961, U.S. Pat. No. 3,154,312, in which the bindings were set side-by-side. The intent was to put the skier in the approximate position he or she would be in if wearing two skis that were held tightly parallel.
This arrangement presents a serious problem, however. The side-by-side binding set-up, using traditional Alpine ski boots and lock-down, releasable bindings, does not permit the skier to apply weight heavily to either edge. This is especially significant because the total length of edge on a typical mono-ski is short, and is half what it would be on dual skis of the same length. While such mono-skis function adequately in soft snow conditions, they have failed to capture an appreciable share of the ski market because control on hard-packed snow or ice is very difficult with the side-by-side binding configuration. The mono-ski of Kent Hunter, Feb. 26, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 4995,631, discloses an attempt to deal with this problem by adding severe sidecut, or arcs, to the sides of a mono-ski; however, the stance remains side-by-side, which prevents the skier from putting full weight on the operational edge. In addition, the lock-down Alpine bindings on the Hunter ski and similar mono-skis, combined with the narrow stance, make falls likely even with temporary losses of balance, because the rider cannot shift weight through a wide forward-backward range.
Efforts were made over the years to create various mono-skis by linking pairs of conventional Alpine skis using various connecting devices. W. J. Wightman, Apr. 29, 1963, U.S. Pat. No. 3,171,667, offers a ski attachment for connecting a pair of skis and for maintaining the skis close together and parallel as a training aid. Alec Pederson, in Jun. 30, 1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4275,904, discloses an attachment consisting of a tailbridge connector and a front plate for converting a pair of skis to a "twinski." Fritz Barthel et al, in Sep. 3, 1996 U.S. Pat. No. 5,551,728, describes a "gliding board" device that converts two Alpine skis into a wide mono ski or snowboard by attaching the skis on the sides of a full-length center piece.
The common denominator of the Wightman and Pederson connection systems, which are designed to convert two skis into a mono-ski, is that they place the skier's feet in a side-by-side stance. As a result, these divisible mono-ski incarnations present the same edging problem as the solid mono-skis. Barthel makes no suggestions as to how to locate the bindings, or even what type to use, and the large center piece would be impractical to carry in many situations; e.g. when a skier in the back country wants to convert two skis to a single board for control on deep powder or poor snow conditions. The Wightman, Pederson and Barthel systems also involve cumbersome connecting devices that would have to be removed while dual skiing to prevent snags on snow or brush.
There are documented efforts to create a mono-ski from a single conventional Alpine ski, with one foot placed ahead of the other. Those employ lock-down Alpine-type bindings set up to accommodate Alpine-type boots.
The "Stic Main" of Erich Genuit, described in Oct. 16, 1931, Deutsches Reich Patent 535818, and the Solo Ski binding system of Robert M. Evans and Franklin G. Miller, described in May 9, 1995 U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,373, offer various methods of converting one ski of a conventional pair into a mono-ski with fore-and-aft binding placement. Typical Alpine bindings and boots are employed in both descriptions, and neither Genuit nor Evans suggest offsetting the bindings at an angle to the axis to the ski. The illustrations in the both patent documents show the bindings in line with the axis of the ski. Traditional Alpine skis are too narrow to permit any significant offset of conventional Alpine bindings, even if it were considered desirable by the designers, because of the length of such binding arrangements, which typically include both a long toe piece and a bulky heel lockdown device.
As stated above, traditional mono-skis have been largely unsuccessful because the rider cannot deliver enough pressure on the edges to execute hard, rapid turns, particularly on hard-packed snow. Genuit's Stic Main and Evans' Solo Ski binding system do not solve this persistent problem, which is compounded by the fact that those systems try to adapt one ski of a downhill ski pair for use as a mono-ski, rather than designing a board for use in conjunction with their fore-and-aft binding arrangements.
The Genuit system includes beveled cuts in the ski that raise the arch side of each foot in relation to the outside of the same foot. Whether this arrangement would actually deliver more power to the edges is unlikely and difficult to ascertain, since there does not appear to be any ski on the market today that employs such a concept. Canting the boots outward in such a fashion would have clear disadvantages, however, making it difficult to bring the knees together in a mutually supporting fashion and making an already narrow and unnatural stance even more unstable, particularly while standing still on the slope.
The Evans Solo Ski binding system is also arranged along the axis of the ski. The front binding is described as a conventional, releasable Alpine ski binding. The rear binding, designed by Evans et al, also accommodates a conventional Alpine ski boot, but in a complex releasable binding that allows both vertical and lateral movement within a rubber cup, similar to the rubber bindings used on water skis. That lateral movement would be a disadvantage, creating instability and reduce the control of a rider attempting a hard, carving turn. Furthermore, the heel of the front foot is fixed in line with the ski, eliminating any possibility of lifting that heel for forward weight shifts and not allowing the application of extra toe or heel pressure on either edge with that foot. The Solo Ski binding system is designed for use on one ski of a conventional ski pair, and for conventional Alpine ski boots. The inflexible, hard-shell boots would not allow the rider to weight the balls of the feet, preventing the rider from accomplishing the dramatic forward-backward weight shifts necessary to adequately control such a long, narrow mono-ski. The lateral movement permitted by the rear binding would reduce control on fast, hard turns.
The use of releasable Alpine bindings on a mono-ski with fore-and-aft bindings also presents a safety problem. If only the front binding releases during a fall, the leg remaining connected to the rear binding may be subject to unusually strong twisting forces from the long end of the ski.
The traditional mono-ski and the existing fore-and-aft mono-skis also present the problem of boot overlap--that is, the boots and bindings will hang over the edge of the ski. As a result, both boot and binding will drag if the ski is angled sharply into the snow. That limits the rider's ability to angle the edge sharply into the snow surface, a prerequisite for what snowboarders refer to as "carving a turn." Any effort to make the mono-ski wider so this drag will not occur, either with the side-by-side or the fore-and-aft binding arrangements, is likely to cause a corresponding decrease in ability to weight the edges, with a resulting loss of control.
This problem is not peculiar to mono-skis. As recreational skiers become more skilled and aggressive, the inability of traditional skis to "carve" on hard snow surfaces is considered a serious deficiency. Various efforts, usually employing binding lifts, are being employed to allow skiers to bring their skis to a higher angle on edge without putting either boot or binding in the snow. The drawback is a higher center of gravity and less stability.
The failure of mono-skis to capture any significant share of the skiing market did not stop efforts to find a way to get lift-served skiers off two sliding surfaces and onto a single board. Snowboards, which began as plastic backyard sliding devices, became more sophisticated and began to be accepted at a few mountains in the 1980s. The sport has exploded in popularity since then, in part because a snowboard allows the rider to apply heavy pressure to the working edge by shifting weight alternately to the heels and toes. Whether a snowboard rider uses "soft" snowboard boots or hard-shell racing boots, the bindings, like those of Alpine skis and mono-skis, lock down the heels. Heel lift on a snowboard is considered highly undesirable, since it would prevent the heel-side edge from rising on a toe-edge turn.
An early incarnation of the snowboard is revealed in Sep. 13, 1983, U.S. Pat. No. 4,403, 785, issued to John M. Hottel. A more recent snowboard is described by Robert Katz in Nov. 13, 1990, U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,655.
In the Katz snowboard and similar versions, a solution is found to the mono-ski's persistent problem of inadequate edge pressure and resulting poor control on hard-packed snow. With bindings set up nearly perpendicular to the axis of the snowboard, the rider can alternately lean far forward and backward to drive the edge into a packed snow surface.
But that edging power comes with a cost--snowboards, typically nearly a foot in width to accommodate the rider's perpendicular stance, are much slower turning than skis. Their slow edge-to-edge, or heel-toe action, makes them hard to handle in moguls or "bumps" and in tight spaces. The sideways stance is also unnatural for skiers accustomed to facing forward, and makes the use of poles impractical. As a result, snowboarders spend a lot of time sitting on the snow, rather than standing, and arduously hopping up slight inclines, rather than easily poling up them.